For a Left Exit from neoliberal integration and and the Euro-system

The prospects for a progressive reform of the eurozone appear more unlikely than ever. The reforms currently on the table, in fact, are likely to make the situation even worse. This is why progressives should resist any further surrender of national sovereignty to the EU and any further deepening and expansion of the eurozone.

The last Plan B conference took place in late October in Lisbon. Here we document the final declaration. Ten years have passed since the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty by the European oligarchy. The European dream has become a nightmare. The European Union, through its treaties and its internal market, is all about social dumping, economic strangulation and Coups against the people.

Can the European Central Bank (ECB) act as an honest broker in the tracker-mortgage scandal? Fianna Fáil has suggested that it step in to oversee the response of the Irish banks and ensure that customers get the appropriate compensation.

There is a whiff of naiveté (at best) about this proposal. It was the ECB that insisted the Irish government redeem the creditors to the Irish banks in full through the so-called bail-out in 2010, hardly the act of an institution committed to the welfare of taxpayers or the citizenry as a whole.

Let’s face it: national sovereignty has become irrelevant in today’s increasingly complex and interdependent international economy. The deepening of economic globalisation – and the massive leaps achieved in the fields of mass transport, communications, technology – have rendered individual states increasingly powerless vis-à-vis the forces of the market. The internationalisation of finance and the growing importance of multinational corporations have eroded the ability of individual states to autonomously pursue social and economic policies – especially of the progressive kind – and to deliver prosperity to their peoples. Financial markets and mega-corporations today wield more power than governments – and can easily bring these to their knees. This means that our only hope of tackling the cross-border challenges of modernity, of taming the power of global financial and corporate leviathans, and of achieving any meaningful change, is for countries to ‘pool’ their sovereignty together and transfer it to supranational institutions (such as the European Union) that are large and powerful enough to have their voices heard, thus regaining at the supranational level the sovereignty that has been lost at the national level. In other words, to preserve their ‘real’ sovereignty, states need to limit their formal sovereignty.

One of Britain’s most celebrated entrepreneurs and an avid supporter of Brexit in the business community, the inventor Sir James Dyson, has argued that World Trade Organization tariffs are not a barrier to financial success or profitable trading with Europe, nor have they prevented his technology company from achieving record financial results. As Sir James put it, the tariffs were “tiny penalty to pay” compared to other taxes such as corporation tax (The Guardian, 27 March 2017). Dyson’s announcement of new investment of 2.5 billion pounds, in order to build a research and development campus in the UK has been enthusiastically welcomed by Theresa May as an example of investor confidence in the Britain’s post-Brexit prospects. Less publicized is the announcement that Dyson is also to invest in Singapore, not just in new production facilities, but in associated R&D employing high skill graduates.